


Things Unattempted Yet

by misspamela



Category: hawa
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-13
Updated: 2011-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-16 22:54:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misspamela/pseuds/misspamela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Whoa, whoa, whoa, please tell me you're not delirious," Danny said, making a big show of checking Steve's forehead, even though he could feel him burning up from six inches away. "Please tell me that 'I wish I was in Newark,’ aren't going to be your last words. No, no, I take that back, because as last words go, I approve, but I am not even entertaining the though that we’re in last words territory here."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Unattempted Yet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eotu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eotu/gifts).



> Huge thanks to Giddy and Celli for wrangling this thing into shape!

"You know what's fucked up?" Danny asked. He leaned back on his elbows, trying to get as comfortable as possible with a throbbing knee and, oh yeah, Steve bleeding out next to him. It had been a good bust gone bad, gone really fucking bad in the worst way possible and now he and Steve were stuck in this goddamned jungle (“Rainforest,” Chin, Kono, and Steve chorused in his head) with no hope of rescue for at least another hour.

"The fact that you're still talking?" Steve mumbled, pressing his face against Danny's forearm, heat radiating from him that Danny shouldn't have been able to feel when it was already 90 degrees out.

"No, what's fucked up is this." Danny paused for dramatic effect. He liked to think that it wasn't lost on Steve, but he could be delirious already, who knew. "Some poor shmuck in Newark as this picture -- possibly this exact picture," he threw one arm out, flailing it at the burbling waterfall in front of them, flanked by green cliffs soaring into the blue sky. "He's got this picture as his desktop, right. And he's staring at it every day, drinking his shitty coffee, wishing he was in the middle of nowhere, in front of a goddamned waterfall, in fucking Hawaii."

Steve laughed, coughing weakly. "That so," he said.

"Yes, that is so. And let me tell you what, my friend. I would give my right fucking arm to be in Newark, scraping ice off my car, drinking aforementioned shitty coffee -- hell, I would rather be in Newark Airport, okay? I am saying it right now. I would rather be in Newark Airport than sitting here in what passes for paradise. You got that?" he yelled at the sky. Speaking as loudly as possible in the general direction of God was the only way that Danny ever got around to praying.

"You know what," Steve said. "I have to say that even I would rather be in Newark right now."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, please tell me you're not delirious," Danny said, making a big show of checking Steve's forehead, even though he could feel him burning up from six inches away. "Please tell me that 'I wish I was in Newark,’ aren't going to be your last words. No, no, I take that back, because as last words go, I approve, but I am not even entertaining the though that we’re in last words territory here."

"No," Steve said. And he was quiet long enough that Danny thought he might have fallen asleep, which was either a good thing or a bad thing; it had been a long time since Danny took his required First Aid course and he never paid that much attention anyways, because he was used to civilization, with ambulances and hospitals. But then he spoke again, startling Danny. "You need people," Steve said.

"Huh?" Danny frowned at him, because of course they needed people. They needed people with cell phones and/or medical equipment, preferably flying a helicopter.

"You need people," Steve said. "You have people in New Jersey. You need people in Hawaii."

"I need -- what are you talking about, I need people?" He poked Steve in the chest, gently. "I have people. I have Gracie, who is my whole life, right here in Hawaii. I had my brother, and I-- I still have him, right, even though he’s gone. I have Rachel, who is, okay, not my favorite person in the world, but she used to be." He stopped. he didn't know how to explain it to Steve, that the end of something wasn't the same as the absence of something. "She used to be," he said. "And that counts for something."  
Danny saw that Steve was drifting off, further away, and he jostled him a bit to get him out of it. "And hello, I have you and Kono and Chin. You think you guys don't count for anything? Jesus. Who do you have, McGarrett? Huh?" Steve was slipping, Danny could see it, sinking down down down. He yelled louder. "Huh, Commander? Who do you have? Your sister, who you sent away? Your old Navy buddies that come around once a year?"

Steve blinked, his eyes coming into focus slowly. "I got you," he whispered. "All I need. Don’t want to...don’t want to fuck this up..."  
And then he was gone.

His eyes rolled back and he just -- stopped -- he stopped breathing, stopped moving, and for one horrible second, _Danny_ stopped breathing, but then his training kicked in and hey, he did remember that Red Cross stuff after all, because he was able to get right up there and pump Steve’s chest and breathe for him, over and over and over. Danny knew how this was going to end, knew it right from the beginning, his face and Steve’s face tracked with Danny’s tears; Danny was going to get tired. He was going to falter. he was going to pass out or get a muscle cramp and he’d have to stop breathing. Which meant Steve would stop breathing. And even though he knew that, even though there was no good ending here, Danny breathed and breathed and fucking breathed because he could not -- could _not_ \-- lose Steve. Danny was a selfish bastard sometimes and frankly, he would not survive that shit. So Steve had to keep breathing, for Danny’s sake.

And just as Danny was getting black spots dancing behind his eyes, just when his forearms started to twitch and tremble, he heard the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard in his life: the sound of a military chopper buzzing low, whipping the trees around and flinging wet leaves into Danny’s face.

The medics pulled him off Steve and wrapped him up in something warm. The last thing Danny saw before he blacked out was Chin’s worried face looking down on him. “You’re a beautiful man,” Danny slurred. “Just beautiful.”

“Good to see you too, buddy,” Chin said, his beautiful, beautiful face fading into the black.  
..............

So they fucked around. Fucked. It happened the night before the crash, after they’d been too late again, just seconds to late, and some Navy kid got blown all to fucking bits before anyone could stop it.

It was one hell of a mess and Steve was the worst out of all of them; he’d tried to talk the kid down, tried to talk some sense into him, but there wasn’t anything anyone could do when someone was that determined to die. Danny had seen it more times than he ever wanted to.

They were at Steve’s house, not even bothering with the bar, a bottle of whiskey between them, Steve silent and sad and getting sadder and fucking sadder until Danny wanted to shake him. Sometimes this life, this business, it was all too much. You had to find something else to keep you going or it was going to drive you nuts.

“Stay,” Steve said, jerking himself out of whatever was going on in his own head. He looked more sober than he should have. “Please?”

“I’m sure as hell not driving anywhere, buddy,” Danny said. “So you’re stuck with me.”

“No,” Steve said, tipping himself out of the chair, and whoops, no, he didn’t look all that steady. He moved over to kneel between Danny’s knees, one hand on each of Danny’s thighs. “Stay,” Steve whispered, his voice low and hoarse and his eyes just _broken_. Danny wasn’t dumb; he knew that this was there-not there-maybe there, but the timing sucked.

“Your timing sucks,” he said to Steve.

“Complain to me later,” Steve said, as he unbuttoned Danny’s pants.

 

...............

Getting back, everything was a blur. Helicopter, hospital, pain meds, nice nurse, nasty nurse, and a doctor who gave him shit for not taking care of his knee, who Danny promptly ignored.

Chin and Kono came to see him as soon as they okayed him for visitors. They both looked tired, cop-tired, like you get when you’ve been running your brain too long on bad coffee and crap food.

“Well, well,” Chin said, crossing the room quickly to clasp Danny’s hand. “It lives.”

“You guys scared the crap out of us,” Kono said, her smile weak and fluttering around the edges. Sometimes Danny forgot how young she was, rookie or no. She didn’t let you see it that often.

“Have you guys heard anything on Steve?” Danny asked. He knew -- _hoped_ \-- that someone would have told him if something was wrong and Chin wouldn’t be standing there smiling of Steve was dead in another room, right?

“Steve’s fine,” Chin said, giving Danny’s hand a quick squeeze and letting him go. “Well,” he made a see-saw motion with his hand. “he’s going to be out of commission for a while and you’ll both have matching canes when you leave, but he’ll pull through.”

Relief washed through Danny. “Thank fucking God.”

“And we got those bastards who set you up,” Kono said, pushing herself off the corner of the doorway, smiling.

“They’re going to prison for a very, very long time,” Chin said, a quick, fierce smile ghosting across his face.

“Limping,” Kono said, with a nod of satisfaction.

“That’s my girl,” Danny said, high-fiving her. “You are a terrifying woman and I love you.”

“Back atcha, brah,” she said. “But we should go. Five-0 isn’t going to run itself. Give me a call if they spring you from this place, yeah?”

“Prepare yourself for a call in about an hour,” Danny said, except his head felt like it was stuffed with cotton and he wasn’t sure he could get himself out of the bed. “I hate hospitals.”

After they left, Danny tried to imagine what a horrible patient Steve was being right now, and that thought was enough to carry him back to sleep with a smile on his face.

......

 

Danny wasn't hard yet; it had been a long-ass day and this was too new, too much for him to catch up with. He let his head fall onto the back of the couch as Steve pulled Danny's pants down and off, flinging them across the room.  
"Always with the drama," Danny said, just under his breath, but the tension in the lines of Steve's body, muscles flexed and eyes dark, the way he was just looking at Danny, like he wanted to eat him alive, fuck if that didn't start getting Danny interested. Danny reached up to unbutton the top button of his shirt. Steve stilled between Danny's knees again, completely rigid, like he didn't trust himself to move.

"Like that, huh?" Danny said. It's not like it was a shock; oh, Danny, the fact that Steve keeps trying to get you out of your shirt means that he wants to get you out of your shirt, but it was still a boost to the old ego. Danny flicked open one button, then another, then another, slowly down to the hem of his shirt.

"And yet," Steve said, slightly hoarse, "you're wearing another shirt."

"It's called an undershirt, you animal," Danny said, pulling his shirt off and okay, fuck it, flinging it across the room. "It is the staple of the well-dressed man's wardrobe. The undershirt separates us from the beasts."

"I'd like to separate you from your undershirt, to be honest," Steve said, sliding his fingers beneath the thin cotton fabric and up the muscles of Danny's stomach, blowing whatever brilliant and incisive wiseass remark Danny was about to come up with out of the water.

Danny didn't have any kind of basis for dealing with this. He'd fucked around in college, yeah, but nothing serious, and then he'd been so focused on his career and becoming a cop that there wasn't any room for anyone let alone men, and then there was Rachel. And that was it. That had fucked him up for good on relationships and no relationships meant no sex; he wasn't a love 'em and leave 'em kind of guy. But Steve...he had no idea what Steve wanted. Sex? More? How much more could they even have, being together 24-fucking-seven?  
What they could have -- what Danny could have -- was apparently Steve fucking McGarrett slowly peeling Danny's undershirt off and touching him gently, reverently, like he was going to break. Light touches, skimming the curve of Danny's shoulders, dipping down to his hips, all while he was looking, pupils blown, intent and deadly serious, looking up and down Danny's body, everywhere but his eyes.  
.......

He had just requested for the nasty nurse to come back (Danny liked a good argument when he was recovering) when Grace and Rachel showed up.

“Danno!” Grace ran to his bed then stopped, unsure. She looked him up and down with her brow furrowed, and Danny could just fucking cry from how good it was to see her. “Can I hug you if I’m gentle?” she asked.

“Are you kidding me? You can hug me all you want, monkey.” She hopped up on the side of the bed and he grabbed her and held her tight. He could see Rachel, blurred behind his tears, standing over him, her arms crossed with her hands tucked under her armpits, the way she always did when she was really upset.

“Come here,” he said, and she came closer, pressing a quick kiss to his forehead. “You took years off my life, Daniel.”

And normally he’d be right back at that, _You think it was a picnic for_ me _?_ , but he could see the tears at the corners of her eyes and he decided to be the bigger man and let it go.

“Is it your knee?” Grace asked. “Did you fall in the rainforest?”

“Yeah, I fell. We got lost and I fell and then Uncle Chin came and picked us up. No big deal.” He kissed the top of her head. “Danno missed you, baby.”

“Mr. WIlliams needs to sleep,” Nurse Nasty said, suddenly appearing in the doorway. Her cold, dead eyes roved over Rachel and Grace. “No more visitors.” Something about her reminded Danny of Kono. Kono in forty years with a few more pounds on her and missing half her soul. Somehow, Danny didn’t think he’d have any better luck in a fight with 60 year-old Nurse Kamehana than he would with Kono.

“You have no soul, you know that?” Danny yelled. “No soul!”

“If you’re quiet, Mr. Williams,” the nurse said, “which I doubt you’re capable of, you can go see Commander McGarrett for a brief visit after your nap.”

“Is Steve awake?” Danny asked, struggling to sit up.

“The only way you’ll find out is if you get some rest,” Nurse Nasty said, coming over and pressing buttons on his I.V. pump. She was probably poisoning him. “So I suggest you get some sleep.”

.....

 

Danny wanted to tell Steve to slow down or hey, maybe we should talk or...something, but he's tired and messed up too and it's been a long time since he's had this kind of touching, skin to skin. Something like joy bubbled up in his chest, strange and startling. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead to Steve's, wrapping his hand around the back of his neck. "Come on, babe."

And that was all Steve needed to hear. He leaned in and kissed Danny, hungry, open-mouthed, like Danny was going to disappear if Steve didn't eat him all up in one go. Danny grabbed Steve's shoulders and pushed him backward onto the floor because hello, he was being manhandled here, and Danny Williams was nobody's drunk prom date. Except for his own prom, of course, but that was a story best left back in Hoboken.

Steve lay on the floor, looking at Danny, his throat working as he swallowed. He was naked; somehow he'd managed to shed the rest of his clothes while they were making out. According to some of the porn Danny had seen, they taught that skill in the Navy. "Whatever," Steve said, then swallowed harshly, his throat working up and down in the pale moonlight. "Whatever you want. I'm good."

"Jesus," Danny said, and had to squeeze his eyes shut to not come in his pants like he was fourteen, for fuck's sake. A blazing, technicolor, surround-sound fantasy of what that could possibly mean started playing in his head. "Warn a guy before you say shit like that," was all Danny managed to get out before awkwardly kicking off his pants and underwear. "You are a fucking porn movie come to life, you know that?"

And he expected some kind of wiseass remark there, but instead Steve just sat up and wrapped his arms around Danny, pressing his face into Danny's shoulder. He rocked his hips up and yes, hello, right there. Danny grunted and shifted off his bad knee, but Steve was right there with him and flipped him onto his side, kissing him gently and trailing his hand up and down Danny's chest. This was so far away from any kind of three-beer queer action like Danny had gotten in college that he just didn't know what the hell to do with it.

Steve bit down on Danny's shoulder and moved slowly down his chest. Danny groaned, shifting his hips. Fuck, okay, now this was familiar territory.

Except not, because Steve was like, the pro champion of the world at sucking cock. He had like -- like gills or something, because he barely stopped to breathe or tease or anything. He went from tenderly kissing his way down Danny's stomach to full-on, relentless, mind-blowing suction in three seconds flat. Danny's brain whited out. He was usually a considerate guy, making sure he was doing some giving as well as receiving, but all he could do now was writhe on the carpet, making embarrassing keening sounds, scrabbling his hands on Steve's back.

.............

Steve looked pale and tired and he was hooked up to a million beeping machines, but he was awake and alert and looked almost bored enough to commit a minor felony as he flipped channels through three different college football games. He sat up as soon as Danny walked in.

"Hey, you're walking," Steve said, looking as pleased as someone possibly could about that fact without actually looking happy.

"With assistance." Danny saluted him with his cane. "I've got this bad boy for another four to six weeks, just in case. Looks like Chin's going to be your patsy, oh, excuse me, your backup until then." Danny hobbled over and settled himself in the chair next to Steve's bed. Steve had a better room than he did; instead of looking out onto the parking lot, Steve's window looked out onto the beach, one of the tourist beaches, crowded and frankly unsanitary-looking.

"Take all the time you need," Steve said absently, looking out the window.

"Yeah, well they sprung me," Danny said. "I called Kono and she's going to be by in a few to pick me up, give me a ride."

"Mmm?" Steve didn't turn his head. His eyes seemed to be following a t-shirt vendor pushing a cart up the street. "Oh, that's nice."

"Hello, are you there?" Danny whacked his cane on the edge of the bed. "I was thinking that maybe we could have a nice conversation here, as it's been a hellish couple of days -- almost dead! naked!, his brain supplied -- and you know, a 'Thank you, Danny for saving my life' might be nice, or a 'good job, partner,' or something--"

"I love you," Steve said, then whipped his head around to stare at Danny. His mouth dropped open. "I didn't mean to say that," he said. "It just came out."

Danny had never seen Lieutenant Commander Steven J. McGarrett look so stone-cold terrified in his entire life. Danny's head was reeling, yes, that this is where they were going, okay! Bu the love thing wasn't exactly a surprise after the friendship followed by the mind-blowing sex. That was kind of how these things went. But he really needed to see where Steve was taking this.

Steve's face shut down like windows slamming -- boom boom boom! and he charged on, "Listen, okay, don't, just, hear me out, okay?"

"I'm listening," Danny said, settling his bad knee into a better position.

"We're friends," Steve said, ticking this very important and completely obvious point off on his fingers. "We care for each other and -- you're right, Danny, I don't have anybody. Not that this is what that's all about." Steve dragged his fingers through his hair. He was starting to look a little wild around the eyes, there.

It was like a car crash in slow motion. Danny needed to put this poor man out of his misery.  
"I'm not desperate or anything, but I do--" Steve took a deep breath and plunged forward, "I do have a harder time expressing myself as you so rightly point out, which means that I don't, ah, open myself up to people, and so there's that." He stopped, obviously marshaling whatever atrophied little people-relating muscles he had in that head of his. "So," he repeated, "there's that. And there's the um, the physical aspect to, um."  
.......  
Danny came so hard, white-hot and amazing, fireworks exploding behind his eyes, _yes, yes, YES_ , that he was useless for almost a full minute afterward, flopping around on Steve’s floor like a gutted fish. Probably not his most attractive moment, but who the fuck cared at that point?

“ _Danny_ ,” Steve said, and it was just a whisper, a rasp in his throat as he stared down at Danny, looking completely destroyed, laid bare and wrecked as he stroked his hand up and down his cock.

“Babe,” Danny said, reaching for him, because they were not on the same page here, obviously, not even _close_ to the same page, but Steve threw back his head as soon as Danny touched his shoulder, gasped, and came all over his hand.  
..........

“Do I look like a beach?” Danny asked, holding up his hand. “A castle?”

“I--what?” Steve switched his face from oh-god-feelings to oh-god-possibly-brain-damaged-partner.

“Because I am being stormed. You are storming me right now. Like I am some kind of _military objective_ that you can take with _overwhelming force_ , instead of a human being with actual feelings and, oh yes, a functional brain that helps me decide what kind of crazy-ass relationships I might want to be in.” Danny leaned over and flicked Steve’s ear.

“Ow,” Steve said, rubbing his ear. “That had been the one part of my body that didn’t hurt, asshole.”

“Now that right there,” Danny said, leaning over the side of the bed and pressing a quick kiss to Steve’s temple. “That is the Steve McGarrett I know and love. Please, babe, call me an asshole again. Music to my ears.”

“Danny, I just-- my head’s not in a good place,” Steve said, like that wasn’t completely obvious. “I just don’t want to fuck anything up.”

“Yeah, you said that,” Danny said quietly.

“Did I?” Steve made a face. “What else did I say?”

“You said you had me, and that was all you needed.” Danny couldn’t remember the last time anyone other than Grace has said anything like that to him. Probably Rachel, and wasn’t that a kick in the ass? Danny laughed. “You also wished you were in Newark, which I am holding against you until your dying day. A day which had better be in the very distant future, mind you.”

“Yeah, well, at the time...” Steve said, letting his eyes drift away from Danny and back out the window. He let his head fall back against the bed and for one brief, horrible moment Danny was right back there in the jungle again, holding Steve’s limp body against him.

“I want,” Steve said. He looked at Danny and looked away. “I just want too much. This is too much. I shouldn’t have pushed things the other night. I don’t want this to be a sex thing. And you’re right; I don’t have anybody else, not really, not like you do. That’s a lot to put on one person, you know? And if we kept the sex out of it, then it wouldn’t be too much. But we went there and that was a stupid move, and now I’ve fucking laid it all out there on my deathbed--”

“Correction,” Danny said, holding up his hand. “Not your deathbed. I have a feeling that you’d be somewhat quieter in death.”

Steve smiled at that, a real smile breaking through the crinkles around his eyes. “Yeah, well, I have a feeling you wouldn’t be. Anyway, what I was trying to say is--”

“Please, please, I can’t take another discussion of your feelings,” Danny said, picking up the little cup of pills on the bedside table. “You need to take these?”

“Not yet,” Steve said. “But Danny, I--”

“Here,” Danny said, spilling two into his hand. “You’re going to take these pills, drink that entire bottle of water, and eat something, for God’s sake. And then you’re going to go sleep for at least fifteen hours. And then, at some point, when you’re feeling better, we’re going to have sex again, this time without your little tiny brain exploding, you got me?”

“I don’t want,” Steve said.

“You want, you don’t want, you know what? You don’t want it to be just a sex thing? Well let me tell you something, Superman. We’ve got everything else down pretty good. So you want to add the sex or not add the sex, that’s up to you.” Danny stood, his hands in his pockets. He shrugged. “Personally, I like sex. Just putting that out there.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, a smile spreading across his face like a sunrise. “I like sex too.”

“Whoa, whoa, really? You don’t say. I’m shocked, completely shocked. Now that we’ve established that earth-shattering fact, go take your damn pain pills and take a nap.” Danny braced himself up with his cane and started hobbling toward the door.

He looked back at Steve, smiling so cautiously at him that it broke his heart a little, Jesus, he had it bad. Oh, fuck it. He hobbled back to hug Steve tight, breathing in the smell of him, still there under the hospital smells, and Steve, the big softie, buried his face into Danny’s neck, just like he’d done that night. “Yeah, yeah,” Danny said. “I’m the wind beneath your wings. I got it.” He gripped the back of Steve’s neck and pressed his lips to Steve’s. “Right back at you, my friend.”


End file.
